Reaction to the Celtics collapse against the Hawks – Felger & Mazz
The Boston Celtics blew a 30-point lead to the Atlanta Hawks on Monday night in Atlanta and ultimately saw their 9-game winning streak come to an end. On Tuesday’s Felger and Mazz, the guys have their thoughts on the loss for the Celtics.
Are you more concerned about the blown lead or the late game play?
Mazz: So at the end of the day, I’m less concerned about them blowing the lead than I am about how they react after they blow it. That, to me, is how I would phrase it. Because again, I think they’re the only team in the league to have a 30-point lead this year and lose the game. I don’t think that’s going to happen with any sort of regularity in the playoffs and they fell asleep, fine. But once Atlanta got the momentum, they got rattled. And this is the pattern with them. This is exactly what happened in the Cleveland game that Wallach was talking about. Once it becomes a game, once it becomes time to execute in the final few minutes, they revert. You still see it. And again, how many of those will they have? As soon as their advantage of being a front running team is gone, and now it’s a fight, stupidity sets in and they start doing dumb things.
Felger: To me, the loss isn’t the thing. You’re not losing to a team like the Atlanta Hawks in the postseason, and you’re probably not going to blow a 30-point lead in the postseason to a lesser opponent. Like, that’s not happening. That’s them falling asleep. I don’t care about them falling asleep and losing the game. This is very much like I said about the Cleveland game. That’s not the story. The loss? Who cares! Falling asleep in the middle of an NBA season happens. Alright, big deal. It’s how you play in tight games in the fourth quarter, offensively mostly, and boy do they suffer from it. Like they bog down as bad as any team, and maybe it’s just because they move the ball so well when they’re playing right, and their play style is so excellent when they’re playing right, that it’s just so glaring when they start walking the ball up and stepping back from three and the iso-ball like, it’s just so obvious because they play in such a better style when they’re not doing that. But again, it feels like all these fourth quarters just devolve into that. And that’s what would concern me, that that’s how they play when it tightens up, and that might trip them up at some point.
